" because hiring managers don't care that much about your degrees or paper qualifications as they care about your hands-on programming skills".......

That is true. And even further, they don't care as much about your hands-on-programming experience as they do which country you come from.
If you are from the US, don't bother even going to the interview. In all probability you were called in to make their interview process look legitimate.

Kingsley Tagbo in O Fallon, Missouri said: IT Managers do not care about the Country you came from ... what would be the rational explanation or reason for that?

IT Managers really only care about your performance ... not your age or your nationality or your race or gender.

Now, I don't want to over-generalize, you may find some isolated IT Managers who are unethical in their hiring practices ... but these are in the minority and they are doing so at their own risk because they are breaking the law ...

however the majority of IT Managers are concerned about their performance because it is in their best interest to do so ... when they don't hire top performers, they lose out and at risk of losing their jobs etc ... so it's in their best interest to hire top performers!

You really have no clue. Anyone who has been in the job market knows that H1B's are the dominant force here now. Hiring managers salavate over them because they will work like dogs and don't care about getting overtime or anything that American workers value. A lot of them get tax breaks for hiring foreign workers and it's a win-win proposition overall for the companies and H1B's, but lose-lose for the American worker.

Daniel in Phoenix, Arizona said: You really have no clue. Anyone who has been in the job market knows that H1B's are the dominant force here now. Hiring managers salavate over them because they will work like dogs and don't care about getting overtime or anything that American workers value. A lot of them get tax breaks for hiring foreign workers and it's a win-win proposition overall for the companies and H1B's, but lose-lose for the American worker.

I don't know about Arizona, but I know of no American citizen in Chicago who's had trouble getting a job in software engineering. I also graduated in May 2008 and had 11 job offers across the midwest and eastern regions of the US. Most offered 40 hour weeks, and a few even paid overtime for anything above 40 hours.

'I know of no American citizen in Chicago who's had trouble getting a job in software engineering"

So what you're saying is that you don't know many people?

Here in Detroit it's nothing but H1Bs. If you're lucky enough to get called into an interview it's with some Indian who just needs to pretend they interviewed the job to an American who they can say was inferior to the Indian they will hire.

I just came off of unemployment and was getting call after call for IT jobs, they just wanted to use me again-and-again as the "US candidate" they interviewed. It became apparent after awhile.

It's been like this for a long time. Mike probably works for some IT school trying to sucker you into spending your money on a worthless education.